Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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41. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the status of the traceability of fish catches (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8694/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Fisheries Control Regulation (EU) 1224/2009 establishing a control system for ensuring compliance with the Common Fisheries Policy and Regulation (EU) 404/2011 provides detailed rules for implementation of the Control regulation. Article 58 of the Control Regulation which applies to fisheries and aquaculture products provides that certain catch data must be ‘available’ throughout the supply chain. Products may be combined in lots and each lot must be labelled with supply chain traceability information. Each ‘lot’ is a quantity of fishery products or aquaculture products of the same species coming from the same area and fishing vessel or fishing vessels or fish farm. The traceability information associated with a ‘lot’ is required to remain available at all stages of production.

The information to be supplied with each lot is:

- Lot ID

- Quantity

- Supplier

- Commercial name

- Scientific name

- Catch area

- Production method

- FAO alpha 3 code

- Name of fishing vessel or vessels

- Date of capture (landing)

- Whether previously frozen.

Under the Common Market Organisation Regulation (EU) 1379/2013, the Area identifiable in a lot is more specific than was provided for in the Control regulation. The CMO regulation requires the identifier of a fishing area to be expressed at the level of FAO sub-area, division, sub-division, fishing effort zone etc., in terms understandable to the consumer.

The Competent Authority in Ireland for the implementation of Article 58 of the Control regulation on traceability is the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority. The Authority in conjunction with Bord Iascaigh Mhara is carrying out a project called e-LOCATE.

e-LOCATE is designed to promote the efficient and secure collection, management  and sharing of product information, through the adoption of global standards and best practices for weighing, labelling and data exchange.

BIM and the SFPA launched the EU funded e-LOCATE scheme in 2013 to provide financial assistance to Irish seafood enterprises for the implementation of new hardware and software for weighing, labelling and traceability. Key to the project was enabling the industry’s transition away from paper-based documentation to adopting modern automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technologies such as bar code scanning, that could facilitate the storing and sharing of information in a standardised, electronic way.